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How Package Design and Packaged-basedMarketing Claims Lead to Overeating

Pierre Chandon*

Pierre Chandon is Professor of Marketing and Director of the Social ScienceResearch Centre at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France.

*Correspondence may be sent to: [email protected].

Accepted 11 June 2012.

Abstract Because packaging reaches consumers at the critical moments ofpurchase and consumption, it has become an important marketing tool for foodmanufacturers and retailers. In this paper, I first review how the marketing,health and nutrition claims made on packaging create “health halos” that makefoods appear healthier than they are, thereby leading to higher consumption yetlower perceived calorie intake. I then show how packaging design (cues, shapes,and sizes) biases people’s perception of quantity and increases their preferencefor supersized packages and portions that appear smaller than they are. Finally,I examine the extent to which mandatory nutrition labels, stricter regulation ofpackage claims, public promotion of mindful eating, and mindless eating nudgescould limit the biasing effects of packaging on food perceptions and preferences.

JEL Codes: I12, I18, M31, M37, M39, M83, Q18, L66.

Introduction

The way food is marketed is commonly identified as one of the primaryreasons for the global obesity epidemic (Kessler 2009; Nestle and Nesheim2012; Swinburn et al. 2011). Much of the research on the effects of foodmarketing on overeating and obesity has focused on advertising, particu-larly television commercials. Although television advertising is clearly anessential tool for food marketers, it has steadily declined in share of mar-keting expenditure as marketers shift resources to the Internet, socialmedia, staged events, product placement, and the point of purchase(Chandon et al. 2009; Winer 2009).

In this paper, I focus on the role of packaging, one of the least-studiedyet fastest-growing marketing tools. Once a by-product of logistical andconservation constraints, food packaging has evolved to become a commu-nication tool in its own right (Young 2004). Packaging includes all theways food and beverages are boxed, wrapped, arranged and presented toconsumers in retail stores (e.g. in bottles, bags, boxes) or restaurants (e.g.in cups, bowls or plates). With few exceptions, such as size information or

# The Author(s) 2012. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of Agricultural and AppliedEconomics Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email:[email protected].

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back-of-package mandatory nutrition information (reviewed in Grunert,Bolton and Raats 2011; Kiesel, McCluskey and Villas-Boas 2011), the infor-mation displayed on the front of packages is controlled by marketers. Thisinformation includes brand names (the corporate brand, umbrella brand,and sub-brand), the brand’s imagery (logo, symbols, slogans, and designelements), benefit claims, seals and endorsements (e.g. “heart healthy”,“smart choice”), owned and third-party characters, nutritional informa-tion, etc. Packaging design, shape, color and materials used are also com-munication tools. As with other elements of the communication mix,packaging helps draw attention to the product and to create unique posi-tive associations that differentiate it from the competition and create addi-tional value in the consumer’s mind. The biggest advantage of packagingis that, unlike traditional advertising, it reaches people at the time of pur-chase and of consumption, the two critical “moments of truth”. No otherexample better demonstrates the importance of packaging as didPepsiCo’s disastrous redesign of Tropicana’s packaging, which led to a20% sales decline in just two months before the old design wasre-introduced (Young and Ciummo 2009).

The goal of this paper is to examine how the design of food packagesand the marketing, health and nutrition claims printed on them influencefood intake and lead to overeating1. To achieve this goal, I start by examin-ing how the marketing, health and nutrition claims communicated onpackages influence people’s expectations (how good the food tastes, howhealthy it is, etc.), their actual experience, and how much they consume. Ithen examine how the increasing sizes and changing shapes of food pack-ages, servings and serving containers all bias perceptions of quantity, andhow these biases prompt consumers to select larger meals. Finally, Idiscuss potential policy solutions that aim to limit the contribution of foodpackaging to the global obesity epidemic.

Health Halos: How Package-Based Marketing and ClaimsInfluence Consumption

Many of the effects reviewed in this section are derived from the factthat the most important consumer benefits of food, such as pleasantness,sensory perceptions or healthiness, cannot be easily or reliably describedbefore they are experienced, and that even the experience itself may notprovide unambiguous information. Yet people overestimate the reliabilityof the judgments that they form through experience and fail to realizehow ambiguous and malleable it can be (Hoch 2002). In the absence ofreliable information about how they will experience a food, consumerstend to consider packaging-based marketing claims and design cues, espe-cially for new foods (e.g. energy drinks) that they are unfamiliar with.This occurs primarily via one of two processes: the categorization of foodinto a pre-existing natural or goal-derived category (e.g. “a snack” or“healthy” food), or inferences made about what is missing from the exist-ing attribute information (e.g. inferring calories from “reduced nutrient”

1For a recent review of the effects of other marketing actions, including advertising and pricing, seeChandon, P., and B. Wansink. 2012. Does Food Marketing Need to Make us Fat? A Review andSolutions. Nutrition Reviews forthcoming.

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claims). Research has focused on categorization to explain the effects ofbranding (the effects of the description of the food and brand name), andon inference-making to explain the effects of specific health and nutritionclaims. Both categorization and inference-making predict that marketingactions that emphasize one aspect of the food as being healthy lead to thecreation of a “health halo”, which makes the food appear healthier than itis, and in turn leads to overconsumption.

People have a strong tendency to categorize food as either healthy ortasty. For example, in one study, 48% of Americans agreed with the fol-lowing statement: “Although there are some exceptions, most foods areeither good or bad for health,” (Rozin, Ashmore and Markwith 1996).Categorization effects are driven by the perceived “nature” of the foodand are largely insensitive to the amount of food under consideration. Forexample, the authors of the study cited above found that a diet withoutany “bad” ingredients such as salt was perceived to be healthier thana diet with only traces of it, although salt is a necessary component ofany diet.

Even when people do not categorize foods as “healthy” or “tasty”, theyoften make inferences about the benefits of product attributes for whichthere is no information by generalizing from specific front-of-packagenutrition, health, or marketing claims that a food scores highly on allnutrition or health aspects, and that they can eat more of it (Andrews,Netemeyer and Burton 1998; Kardes, Posavac and Cronley 2004). Unlessthey are prompted to explicitly engage in counterfactual reasoning, theseclaims selectively trigger consistent beliefs or associations, thereby biasingtheir inferences toward confirming the claims made (Mussweiler 2003).For example, reading a marketing or nutrition claim that a sandwich is“healthy” or “low in fat” facilitates the retrieval of consistent information(e.g. “this sandwich contains salad”), which confirms the claim and mayprompt the consumer to infer other nutritional dimensions consistent withit (e.g. “this sandwich is not fattening”).

Effects of Food Branding and Claims on Taste and Health Expectations

The name of the food (brand name or generic category name) and itsgeneral description strongly influences health expectations in ways thatare often uncorrelated with reality (Oakes 2006). A study by Oakes (2005)found that people thought that eating one mini Snickers bar (47 calories, 2grams of fat and 6 gram of carbs) once a day when hungry would lead tomore weight gain than eating a cup of 1% fat cottage cheese, 3 carrots and3 pears (569 calories, 6 grams of fat, and 161 grams of carbs). In a studycarried out with Brian Wansink, we observed 30% lower calorie estima-tions for granola than for M&Ms, a product with the same caloric density,but considered less healthy (Wansink and Chandon 2006a). Similar stereo-types affect the perception of ingredients and macro-nutrients. Forexample, Raghunathan, Naylor and Hoyer (2006) found that crackers wereexpected to be tastier when they were described as containing mostly“good fat” than when described as containing mostly “bad fat”, especiallyamong consumers who expected unhealthy food to be generally tastier.The name of fast food restaurants and the foods on the menu can alsocreate health halos (Tangari et al. 2010). For example, a study found that

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Subway meals were perceived to contain about 20% fewer calories thansame-calorie McDonald’s meals (Chandon and Wansink 2007a).

To examine whether health halos had changed since the above studiestook place, in April 2012, 192 U.S. consumers were asked to estimate thenumber of calories contained in sandwiches, beverages and snack foodscategorized as healthy or unhealthy. As shown in figure 1, respondentsunderestimated the calories in the three “healthy” foods by 33%, and over-estimated the number of calories of the “unhealthy” foods by 25%. As aresult, even though the three “healthy” foods actually contained 34%more calories than the “unhealthy” ones, people estimated that they con-tained 28% fewer calories. Clearly, health halos continue to polarizecalorie perceptions, making healthy foods appear healthier than they areand unhealthy foods appear less healthy than they are.

Health halos can have surprisingly strong effects when people are con-sidering a meal that combines “healthy” and “unhealthy” food. Manystudies have found that a meal combining one healthy food and one lesshealthy food is estimated to have fewer calories than the unhealthy foodalone. For example, Chernev and Gal (2010) found that a hamburger wasperceived to have 761 calories, but the same hamburger with a carrot andcelery salad was thought to have only 583 calories. This effect occursbecause people think in terms of average healthiness instead of addingthe calories of each component of the meal. This “negative calorie” illu-sion is particularly strong among people who are on a diet, probablybecause they are more prone than others to categorize foods based ontheir perceived healthiness (Chernev 2011a). However, this illusion

Figure 1 Positive and Negative Health Halo Effects on Calorie Perception

Note: The “healthy” foods were one Pret-a-Mangerw brie, basil and tomato baguettesandwich, one 12 oz. Odwallaw Super Protein fruit smoothie, and two tablespoons of Jifw

low sodium, 33% less sugar peanut butter. The “unhealthy foods” were one Big Macw, a 12oz. can of Coca-Colaw classic, and two tablespoons of Jifw regular peanut butter.


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disappears when people estimate the calories perceived in each foodsequentially rather than estimating the number of calories contained in thewhole meal (Chernev 2011b).

Health Halo Effects on Consumption

Health halos driven by branding, marketing, health or nutritionclaims do not simply change expectations but can act as a placebo andchange post-intake evaluations and consumption. Robinson et al. (2007)found that children thought the same food tasted better when it wasbranded McDonald’s. Moreover, Raghunathan et al. (2006) found thata smoothie was judged to taste better when described as a product“generally considered healthy”. Lee, Frederick and Ariely (2006) foundthat adding vinegar improved the taste of beer, but only when it wasdescribed as a special ingredient, not when described as vinegar.Interestingly, the description had no effect when it was revealed aftertasting, suggesting that ingredient branding affected preferences byinfluencing the experience itself rather than by acting as an independentnegative input or by modifying the retrospective interpretation ofthe experience. Marketing descriptions can even influence biologicalresponses. Crum et al. (2011) found that descriptions of the same milk-shake as being either “indulgent” or “sensible” influenced physiologicalsatiation as measured by gut peptide ghrelin levels. Neuroimagingstudies (Plassmann et al. 2008) have shown that marketing actions influ-ence not just self-reported liking, but also its neural representations,suggesting that these effects are not merely influenced by social desir-ability when reporting subjective experience.

Health halos influence the volume of food consumption and can lead toovereating, defined here as people eating more without being aware of it.For example, one study found that adding adjectives like “succulent” or“homemade” boosted sales by up to 28% (Wansink, van Ittersum andPainter 2005). Provencher, Polivy and Herman (2008) noted a 35% greaterintake of the same cookie when it was described as a healthy “oatmealsnack” rather than an indulgent “gourmet cookie”, regardless of theweight consciousness or dietary restraints of the participant. WhenChandon and Wansink (2007a) asked people to imagine that they hadreceived a coupon for either a McDonald’s Big Mac (containing 600 calo-ries and generally considered unhealthy) or a coupon for a foot-longSubway sandwich (a chain generally considered healthy, even though thisparticular sandwich contains 900 calories), participants ordered 111 calo-ries worth of dessert and sodas to go with the “healthy” sandwich versus48 calories with the “unhealthy” burger. The meal with the “healthy”sandwich therefore had 56% more calories than the meal with the“unhealthy” burger, yet people thought that the “healthy” meal contained19% fewer calories than the “unhealthy” one. In another study, Wansinkand Chandon (2006a) found that labeling both “healthy” and “unhealthy”foods as “low fat” reduced calorie estimation by 20% to 25%, andincreased what was considered to be the “appropriate serving size” by20%. More importantly, we found that labeling chocolate candies as “lowfat” increased consumption during one meal occasion by 16% amongnormal-weight people and by 46% among overweight individuals, but


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this labeling had no effect on both groups’ estimates of the number ofcalories that they had consumed (see figure 2).

Health halos influence consumption because people feel that they caneat more of a healthy food, or can eat more unhealthy (but tasty) foodafter eating healthy food without suffering any adverse health consequen-ces (Ramanathan and Williams 2007). In fact, simply considering thehealthier option without actually consuming it can be enough to enticesome consumers to choose the most indulgent food available because itmakes them hungrier and allows them to vicariously fulfill their nutri-tional goals (Finkelstein and Fishbach 2010; Wilcox et al. 2009). Anotherexplanation is that people anticipate feeling less guilt from eating foodsthat they perceive as healthy (Chandon and Wansink 2007a).

Moderators of Health Halo Effects

Health halos generally have a positive impact on consumption, althoughtheir effectiveness is moderated by comparisons with other foods in thesame category and by how they influence flavor expectations (Kiesel andVillas-Boas 2010; Kozup, Creyer and Burton 2003). Not everybodyresponds in the same way to packaging-based marketing communication;the importance attached to nutrition is an important individual moderator.In a recent study, Irmak, Vallen and Robinson (2011) showed that describ-ing the same food as a “salad special” as opposed to a “pasta special,” ornaming the same candy as “fruit chews” rather than “candy chews”increased perceptions of the healthfulness, tastiness and actual consump-tion of the food (but not its perceived “fillingness”) among people whowere focused on diet and weight. Interestingly, the inferences tended to bethe opposite among non-dieters, and disappeared when dieters wereasked to consider the actual ingredients (vs. the name), and when examin-ing only dieters with a high need for cognition. This suggests that these

Figure 2 Health Halos: “Low-fat” Claims Increase Actual (but not Perceived) Snack FoodConsumption

Note: Reproduced from Wansink, B., and P. Chandon. 2006. Can ’Low-Fat’ Nutrition LabelsLead to Obesity? Journal of Marketing Research 43 (4): 605-617.


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effects are driven by heuristic processing. More generally, marketingeffects tend to be stronger for unfamiliar brands and products, and amongpeople with limited experience with the taste of the different products inthe category(Hoegg and Alba 2007).

Gender also accounts for differences in responses. Unlike women, whotend to pay more attention to diet and weight, men are more likely torespond negatively to health claims, particularly to “low fat” claims asopposed to more general “healthy” claims (Bowen et al. 1992). The nega-tive association between health and taste also seems less pronounced inEurope, where people tend to associate “healthy” with freshness andquality, and thus sometimes healthier can be tastier (Fischler, Masson andBarlosius 2008; Werle et al. 2011). These brand and individual differencescould explain some of the variation in the effects of health claims on con-sumption, including the null and opposite effects of some of the earlierstudies cited (Roefs and Jansen 2004; Wardle and Solomons 1994).

Another important moderator of the effects of health claims is whetherstudies examine purchase or consumption decisions. Most of the studiescited here looked at the effects of marketing communication on how muchto eat once the decision of what to eat had been made. The effects of healthpositioning on purchase decisions are probably less positive because ofthe negative taste inferences that some people (particularly men and non-dieters) make about “healthy” food, and because taste is a more importantdriver of food choice than of consumption volume (Stewart, Blisard andJolliffe 2006).

Biased Size Impression: How Package Size and ShapeInfluence Consumption

Trends in Package and Serving Sizes

With a few exceptions (like wine and liquor), food and beverage manu-facturers are free to choose the size and description (e.g. “medium” or“value” size) of the packages and servings that they offer on the market.Restaurants can also freely set serving sizes and the way they describethem. In 2012, for example, the Canadian chain Tim Horton added a 24oz. “extra-large,” coffee cup, renaming the old “extra-large” as “large”,the old “large” as “medium,” etc. Restaurants and some manufacturers(e.g. the beer industry) also often determine the size and shape of theglasses, plates, bowls or utensils that consumers use to eat with. Choosingthe size and shape of the package, serving or container is therefore animportant decision for food marketers.

Product package and serving sizes have grown rapidly over recentdecades and are now almost invariably larger than the recommendedserving sizes determined by the United State Department of Agriculture(Nielsen and Popkin 2003; Young and Nestle 2002). While this trend hasbeen observed in much of the developed world, “supersizing” is particu-larly common in the United States, and has been identified as one reasonwhy obesity has increased faster there than in other developed countries(Rozin et al. 2003). Larger package and serving sizes almost always havelower unit prices (by volume or weight), except in the rare instances whenthere is more competition on smaller sizes or when smaller sizes are sold


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at a loss in order to draw customers to retail stores (Sprott, Manningand Miyazaki 2003). Marketers can reduce the unit price of larger sizes,and hence increase consumer value, because of their lower packagingcosts. More importantly, larger servings and packages allow greater abso-lute margins for marketers because the marginal cost of the extra food isoften minimal compared to its perceived value for the consumer. For foodretailers and restaurants with high fixed costs (real estate, labor, market-ing) reducing serving sizes, and hence average consumer expenditure,requires a huge increase in traffic to break even. This explains why thefew restaurant chains that have tried to downsize their servings (e.g. RubyTuesday in 2003) often quickly stop promoting these items or stop offeringthem altogether. In fact, it may be profit-maximizing for food marketers toprice the incremental quantity below its marginal cost if their products arebought by two distinct consumer segments: one that is willing to paymore for smaller serving sizes that help them control their intake; andanother that is unconcerned about overeating and willing to buy largerquantities to obtain the lower unit price (Dobson and Gerstner 2010;Wertenbroch 1998). As a result, larger sizes are typically more profitable forfood marketers, and they benefit from a higher perceived economic andenvironmental value – a win-win in all aspects aside from convenience andconsumption control.

Marketers can also increase package and serving sizes without changingthe actual packages by promoting bundles of multiple packages (e.g. “buyone, get one free” or “one for $1.00 and two for $1.50). Although onestudy found that removing the price advantage of menu bundles did notsignificantly influence caloric intake in fast-food restaurants (Harnacket al. 2008), another study found a significant effect among overweightconsumers (Vermeer et al. 2010a). In the context of grocery retailing, manystudies have shown that quantity discounts lead to stockpiling, which inturn accelerates consumption (for a review, see Neslin and Van Heerde2009). Indeed, the better value of supersized packages and servings is thenumber one reason provided by consumers to justify their purchase(Vermeer, Steenhuis and Seidell 2010c).

Effects of Larger Package and Serving Sizes

With the exception of children under three (Rolls, Engell and Birch2000), larger serving sizes significantly increase consumption (Devitt andMattes 2004; Fisher, Rolls and Birch 2003; Fisher and Kral 2008), as doserving sizes in kitchens and in restaurants (Rolls, Morris and Roe 2002).Conversely, reducing portion sizes, for example by splitting cookies andcandies in two, can significantly reduce consumption (Marchiori,Waroquier and Klein 2012). The increased energy intake from supersizingservings (Rolls, Roe and Meengs 2007b) as well as the decrease in energyintake from downsizing servings (Levitsky and Pacanowski 2011) are notfollowed by caloric compensation and can last for up to 10 days.Supersized servings can even increase the consumption of bad-tastingfoods, such as 14-day-old popcorn (Wansink and Kim 2005); consumptionchanges of at least 30% are frequently reported (Steenhuis and Vermeer2009). A recent meta-analysis of 67 studies estimates that consumptionincreases by 22% when serving size doubles (Zlatevska, Dubelaar andHolden 2012), an effect that was significantly larger for adults than


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for children under 10, and slightly larger for men than women, aswell as when people were not paying attention to the food being served.The volume of food matters more than the actual number of calories,which suggests that these effects are not driven by homeostasis. In fact,reducing caloric density and increasing volume without raising calories isone of the few win-win areas for both food marketing and public health(Kral, Roe and Rolls 2004; Ledikwe, Ello-Martin and Rolls 2005).

In our study of the effects of stockpiling on food consumption(Chandon and Wansink 2002), we manipulated the quantity of variousready-to-eat and non-ready-to-eat foods that consumers had in theirpantry (holding prices constant) during a randomized controlled fieldexperiment. We found higher daily consumption rates for stockpiled prod-ucts, especially in the first days after the stockpiling, but only for foodsthat were ready to eat – there was no such increase in consumption forfoods that required preparation or were an ingredient of a meal. Most ofthe consumption boost was explained by the higher likelihood of consum-ing the food over the time period rather than by a higher quantityper-consumption-occasion, and that this likelihood of higher consumptioncould be explained by the greater visibility of stockpiled food in people’spantries and refrigerators.

There are a few exceptions, however. Very small sizes (e.g. 100-caloriepacks) may increase consumption volume more than regular sizes on aspecific consumption occasion, but this effect is limited to hedonic prod-ucts, restrained eaters, or people who are trying to regulate their foodintake (Coelho do Vale, Pieters and Zeelenberg 2008; Scott et al. 2008).These studies show that small units “fly under the radar” and encouragelapses in self-control because their consumption fails to activate healthyeating goals. However, these effects do not seem to hold for long periods,whereupon small sizes do lead to reduced calorie intake (Stroebele,Ogden and Hill 2009).

Effects of Larger Serving Containers

Research has found similar results with respect to the supersizing ofcups, bowls and plates, although the effect does not seem to hold in labstudies, where people are repeatedly asked to eat identical food(Caine-Bish et al. 2007; Rolls et al. 2007a). One study showed that peoplewho were given a 24oz. bowl both served and consumed from 15-38%more ice cream than those given a 16oz. bowl (Wansink, van Ittersum andPainter 2006). Larger containers increase consumption even when consum-ers do not serve themselves; a recent study showed that increasing thesize of a container of chocolate candies increased intake by 129% despiteholding serving size constant. This illustrated that larger containers stimu-late food intake over and above their impact on serving size (Marchiori,Corneille and Klein 2012). These results are consistent with those of anearlier study, which found that people used more spaghetti and oil whenthey were in a larger package, but the actual amount of product in thepackage was held constant (Wansink 1996).

Even “virtual” serving sizes can influence consumption. Simply addingunobtrusive partitions (e.g. colored papers between the cookies inside thepackage or a red chip for every seven yellow chips in a tube) can reduceintake (Cheema and Soman 2008; Geier, Wansink and Rozin 2012).


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However, partitioning may only work when people pay attention to thepartition. One study (Vermeer, Bruins and Steenhuis 2010b) found that93% of the purchasers of a king-size pack containing two single-servingcandy bars intended to consume both within one day, often because theyhad not noticed that smaller candy bar sizes were available for purchase.

Why Larger Servings Lead To Overeating: Biased Size Perceptions

There are a number of explanations regarding why large packages andservings increase consumption. Obviously these factors have an effectbecause people routinely eat beyond the level at which their appetite issatisfied, their motivation being the enjoyment derived from eating andthe anticipated reward from continuing to eat strongly (Berridge 2009;Mela 2006). Social factors also strongly influence food intake, especiallyamong U.S. and overweight consumers (Wansink, Payne and Chandon2007). For example, people associate larger portions with higher socialstatus and choose larger portions when they feel powerless and want toassert themselves (Dubois, Rucker and Galinsky 2012). People also eatmore if others around them eat more, particularly if the people they areimitating are not obese (Herman and Polivy 2005; McFerran et al. 2010).

Larger serving and package sizes increase consumption becauseso-packaged items are typically cheaper by the unit; people respond tocheaper food prices by increasing consumption (for a review of the effectsof price, see Chandon and Wansink 2012). More interestingly, perceptionof the price paid to purchase the food influences consumption even afterthe food has been consumed and is therefore an irrecoverable sunk costthat should not, rationally, influence consumption decisions (Chandonand Wansink 2002). For example, Wansink (1996) found that larger pack-ages did not increase consumption when people did not think that thefood was more cheaply priced (e.g. when a larger bottle is said to containtap water rather than mineral water).

Consumption norms are one of the key explanations for the effects ofpackage sizes (Wansink and van Ittersum 2007). A majority of Americansconform to the social norm of “cleaning their plate” no matter how muchfood they find on it (Birch et al. 1987). However, this cannot explain whylarge packages also increase the amount of inedible products poured, suchas shampoo, cooking oil, detergent, dog food and plant food. Nor does itexplain why large packages of M&Msw, chips and spaghetti increase con-sumption in studies where even the smaller servings were too large to eatin one sitting (Wansink 1996). Another “normative” explanation is thatpeople use package, serving and container sizes to determine the“normal” or “appropriate” amount to consume (Geier, Rozin and Doros2006; Ueland et al. 2009). The consumption of people who follow a normbased on the size of the container will obviously be influenced by the sizeof that container.

Perhaps the main explanation for the effects of supersizing is thatpeople underestimate how large today’s supersized servings and packageshave become. Information about package and serving size, volume orcalorie content is often not available (e.g. in restaurants or at home, oncethe food is no longer in its original packaging). Even in supermarketswhere size information is available on the package or on the shelf tags,most people do not to read it, preferring to rely on visual estimations of


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the package’s weight or volume to infer the amount of product that it con-tains (Lennard et al. 2001). An illustration of these visual biases can befound in an experiment by Wansink, Painter and North (2005), whichfound that people who were served tomato soup in “bottomless” bowlsthat were continuously refilled ate 73% more than those eating fromnormal bowls, but they estimated that they ate only 4.8 calories more. Thehigher consumption in this study may be caused by both a perceptualbias (people not realizing how much they had eaten because the level ofthe soup in the bowl did not go down) and by a norm that they shouldconsume a fixed amount of what they are served.

Many studies have shown that calorie and volume estimations exhibitdiminishing sensitivity to the actual increase in size (i.e. perceptionchanges more slowly than does reality). For example, we asked 156 stu-dents to choose between three fast-food meals that contained differentsizes of chicken nuggets, sodas and fries, and to estimate the calories oftheir respective meals (Chandon and Wansink 2007b). As shown infigure 3 (control condition), people slightly overestimated the caloriesof small meals but strongly underestimated the calories of large meals.The perception of meal size follows an inelastic function of actual mealsize, meaning that perceptions increase too slowly and with diminishingsensitivity as the size of the meal increases.

The underestimation of size changes has been replicated across anumber of studies and participants, including trained dieticians (Chandonand Wansink 2007b; Elbel 2011; Tangari et al. 2010; Wansink and Chandon2006b). On average, doubling the size of the food quantity (i.e. a 100%increase) leads to an increase in perceived size of only 50% to 70%. As

Figure 3 Errors in the Perceived Calories of Meals are Driven by Meal size, not Body Size,and Corrected by Piecemeal Estimation, not by Education

Note: Reproduced from Chandon, P., and B. Wansink. 2007. Is Obesity Caused by CalorieUnderestimation? A Psychophysical Model of Meal Size Estimation. Journal of MarketingResearch 44 (1): 84-99.


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a result, whereas small servings tend to be accurately estimated, largeservings are greatly underestimated. Furthermore, this underestimation oflarger sizes is the same regardless of the individual’s body mass or inter-est in nutrition. In other words, meal size – not body size – explainsserving size errors. People with a high body mass are more likely tounderestimate their calorie intake (Livingstone and Black 2003) becausethey tend to select larger meals, not because they are intrinsically worse(or biased) estimators (Wansink and Chandon 2006b).

Just like the perception of meal sizes, the perception of the size of indi-vidual packages or containers grows more slowly than it should.Moreover, the shape of the package–particularly the way the package isincreased to accommodate the new quantity of food–can exacerbate thisunderestimation. For example, people visually overestimate the height of acylindrical object (such as a drinking glass) compared to its width(Raghubir and Krishna 1999). Confirming this elongation bias, studiesinvolving professional bartenders and non-dieting adults showed that thisbasic visual bias caused people to unknowingly pour and drink up to 88%more into a short, wide glass than into a tall, narrow one of the samevolume (Wansink and Van Ittersum 2003). The size-contrast illusion isanother well-known phenomenon: if 4oz. of mashed potatoes is spoonedonto a 12-inch diameter plate, people estimate its size to be less than if ithad spooned it onto an 8-inch plate (van Ittersum and Wansink 2012); thatis, the size contrast between the potatoes and the plate is greater on the12-inch plate than on the 8-inch plate, leading people to underestimate theamount of potatoes.

Recent studies have started to look at the interaction effects of size andshape on size perceptions and preferences (Krider, Raghubir and Krishna2001; Krishna 2006). These authors found that the lack of sensitivity toincreasing sizes was even stronger when packages and servings increasedin all three dimensions (height, width, and length), compared to whenthey only increased in one dimension (Chandon and Ordabayeva 2009).This may explain why the effect of serving containers on consumption isstronger for cups, glasses and bowls (3D objects) than for plates (essen-tially 2D). For example, Nailya Ordabayeva and I asked 112 students toexamine two-dimensional representations of four sizes of popcorn boxes,

Figure 4 Underestimation of Package Supersizing, Especially for Proportional PackageChange


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labeled S, M, L, and XL on a computer screen (see figure 4). We told thestudents that the volume of the smallest container was 70cl, and askedthem to estimate the size of the other three containers, which were each67% larger than the preceding one. In the 1D condition this increase wasobtained by only increasing the height of the container, whereas in the 3Dcondition it was obtained by increasing all three dimensions proportion-ally. As figure 4 shows, the underestimation of the size increase was par-ticularly severe in the 3D (proportional) increase. Similar effects areobtained with packages of different shapes (cylinders, spheres), for actualproducts (vs. pictures of products), when people paid a lot or a little atten-tion, or when their accuracy was rewarded (Chandon and Ordabayeva2009). In addition, increasing product packages or servings in all threedimensions (rather than one dimension only): decreased the unit pricepeople were willing to pay for larger sizes by up to 57%; reduced the like-lihood of buying supersized alcoholic beverages by 32%; and increasedthe likelihood of buying a downsized cola and popcorn by 21%. Becausepeople underestimate volume changes that occur in three dimensions,they pour more beverage into conical containers (e.g. cocktail glasseswhere volume changes in three dimensions) than into cylindrical contain-ers (where volume changes in one dimension). While some studies haveshown that a portion of these effects is mediated by attention (Folkes andMatta 2004; Folkes, Martin and Gupta 1993), ongoing research suggeststhat they are mostly driven by biases in the estimation of size changes(e.g. people failing to observe the compound changes of multipledimensions).

Managing Size Impressions Through Package Design, Size Names, AndContext Effects

Even if the actual size of the packages remains constant, marketers caninfluence the perceived size by changing some of the elements of thepackage design, or by changing the description of the sizes, or the rangeof sizes available. Unusual and novel packages, because they attract moreattention, are perceived to contain more product (Folkes and Matta 2004).Deng and Kahn (2009) showed that people expected packages with pic-tures of the product on the bottom or on the right of the package to beheavier. Simply showing more products on the packaging has been shownto increase the perception of size and consumption, especially when con-sumers are paying more attention (Madzharov and Block 2010).

The size descriptions used for food and beverages (e.g. “large” or“biggie”) have acquired meanings among consumers, who are generallyable to rank them accurately (Aydınoglu, Krishna and Wansink 2009). Inreality, these labels mask huge discrepancies because a small size fromone restaurant or brand can be larger than a medium size from another(Hurley and Liebman 2009). Unlike McDonald’s for example, Burger Kingdid not abandon its largest “king” drink cup, but renamed it a “large”(Harris et al. 2010; Young and Nestle 2007). These labels are importantbecause they influence size perceptions, preferences and actual consump-tion. Aydınoglu and Krishna (2011) found that “labeling down” (labelinga “large” serving as “medium”) had a stronger impact on size perceptionthan “labeling up” (labeling a “small” serving “large”). The same authors


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found that smaller labels made people eat more, but think that they hadeaten less.

Finally, the effects of package size on consumption are influenced bythe range of the other sizes available. For example, Sharpe, Staelin andHuber (2008) found that people avoid the largest or smallest drink sizes.Such an aversion to extremes prompts consumers to choose larger-sizeddrinks when the smallest drink size is dropped, or when a larger drinksize is added to a set.

Policy Implications

What could and should be done to limit the potentially harmful contri-bution of package-based marketing claims and package design to overeat-ing? We briefly consider four approaches: mandatory nutritioninformation, regulation of health claims, encouraging “mindful” consump-tion, and nudging people toward “mindless” healthy eating.

Mandatory Nutrition and Calorie Information

In theory, mandatory nutritional labeling should be able to correct forhealth halos by providing objective evidence about calories and nutrientcontent, thereby showing that foods with a “low fat” claim are not neces-sarily low in calories. In practice, however, the effects of labeling on con-sumer demand and on the actions of food marketers have been mixed(Grunert et al. 2011). A number of studies have examined the impact ofthe 1990 U.S. Nutrition and Labeling Education Act (NLEA), which madenutritional information mandatory for packaged foods, but not for foodpurchased in restaurants, schools, hospital cafeterias or from vendingmachines. Overall, field and laboratory studies have not detected that theNLEA was accompanied by major changes in consumers’ search forand retention of nutritional information, except among highly motivatedand less knowledgeable consumers (Balasubramanian and Cole 2002). Asone would expect, nutritional information has a stronger effect amongpeople who are concerned with their diet due to health issues (Howlettet al. 2012)

It was also expected that mandatory nutrition labeling would encouragefood manufacturers to improve the nutritional quality of their products.However, recent studies suggest that the average nutritional quality offood products sold in grocery stores had actually worsened compared topre-NLEA levels, or compared to similar food products unregulated bythe NLEA (Moorman, Ferraro and Huber 2012). Although food marketersresponded to the NLEA by introducing healthier lines through brandextensions, and although they have added taste-neutral positive nutrientssuch as vitamins, the nutritional quality of the core brands that accountfor a large portion of people’s diets has actually slightly deteriorated(Moorman 1996; Moorman et al. 2012). Moorman et al. (2012) tested theeffects of the NLEA with longitudinal nutritional data from more than 30product categories, using a control group (foods like fresh meats that aresold in supermarkets but do not require nutritional fact labels, as well asfoods sold in restaurants). They found that, on average, the NLEA actuallyreduced brand nutritional quality relative to the control group butincreased taste (evaluated by Consumer Reports). Although the NLEA


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had positive effects for firms competing in low-health categories (e.g.potato chips) or small-portion categories (e.g. peanut butter), it tended tohave negative effects in brands in large-portion categories (e.g. frozendinners), for niche brands, as well as for firms with larger market power.This may have happened because food marketers refused to compete ontransparent, imitable and ambivalent nutrition attributes, choosing insteadto compete on the uniformly-valued attribute of taste in order to avoidlosing taste-conscious consumers who think that calories and taste areinversely correlated. This negative effect on supply may explain why theNLEA did not improve the diet (except for the fiber and iron intake) ofpeople who read labels (Variyam 2008).

Research on the effectiveness of mandatory calorie information in res-taurants is more encouraging. Recent studies suggest that, despite mixedresults (Elbel et al. 2009), calorie information does, on average, improvefood decisions (Downs, Loewenstein and Wisdom 2009; Harnack andFrench 2008; Ludwig and Brownell 2009; Roberto, Schwartz and Brownell2009). For example, a large-scale study (Bollinger, Leslie and Sorensen2011) found that calorie posting led to a sustained 6% reduction in averagecalories per transaction in Starbucks outlets. Another large-scale studyfound significant calorie decreases in 168 New York City fast food restau-rants after the imposition of mandatory calorie labeling for all but oneexamined chain (Dumanovsky et al. 2011).

Differences in dietary goals and calorie-based inferences may explainthe inconsistent results of calorie labeling studies. Calorie posting has astronger effect on: high-income, highly-educated consumers; on womenrather than on men; and when adults order food for their children ratherthan for themselves. Burton et al. (2006) found that providing nutritionalinformation did not influence purchase intentions unless there was anutrition label shock (i.e. when expectations were wrong). Similarly,Tangari et al. (2010) found that calorie disclosures had inconsistent effectsacross menu items and restaurant chains due to different perceptions andinitial expectations about the calorie levels of each type of food, or of thetype of food served in those chains.

Burton and Kees (2011) point out that calorie labeling, like other nutri-tion labels, can only be expected to influence the subset of consumerswho: a) notice the labels; b) are motivated and able to process the informa-tion; c) can use this information to change their choices; d) are not alreadychoosing low-calorie options; e) do not already know calorie content; f )are not trying to maximize calories consumed for price paid; and g) donot think that lower calories mean lower taste. Hence, we should expectthat mandatory nutrition labeling will lead to only a modest reduction inoverall calorie intake for the total market of diners.

Regulating Package Claims

The evidence reviewed here suggests that there is a case for strongerregulation of health and nutrition claims. These claims are not just errone-ously generalized, they are also often plainly misunderstood (Mariottiet al. 2010; Williams 2005). For example, claims such as “provides energy”are often misunderstood as “energizing”. More generally, consumersexpect that the health benefits are monotonically related to nutrientcontent (“more is better”), when in reality the relationship is often


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curvilinear (“moderate is better”). Moreover, consumers may not realizethat they are already taking too much of a particular nutrient (e.g. proteinintake in Western countries). And some claims are based on flimsy scienceor they overstate research findings.

These issues have led some researchers to call for an outright ban onfront-of-package claims (Nestle and Ludwig 2010). Other recommenda-tions are more nuanced but still have important practical implications. Forexample, Mariotti et al. (2010) recommend that only generic ‘structure-function claims’ should be allowed (as opposed to claims for a specificbrand), and only when consumption levels are not sufficient in the popu-lation. These authors also recommend that the claims be accompanied bydisclaimers explaining that health-related conditions are also influencedby many other factors, that more is not necessarily better, and that con-sumers should follow general dietary guidelines. This, however, wouldreduce the effectiveness of health claims, including those that may betruly beneficial for consumers. Acting upon these concerns, in 2006 theEuropean Commission (EC) established a list of just 29 authorized nutri-tional claims2 (Gilsenan 2011). In 2012, after consolidating the 44,000health claims submitted by companies into a list of 4,600, the EC agreed toauthorize 222 claims, rejected 1,600 claims, and asked for more scientificevidence on the rest.

Promoting Mindful Consumption

One classic approach to help people make better decisions is to educatethem about potential biases and encourage them to pay more attentionto nutrition when making food choices. Unfortunately, existing researchhas cast doubt on its effectiveness. Chandon and Wansink (2007a) foundthat consumers’ nutritional involvement improved calorie estimationsin general but did not reduce the halo effect. Similarly, Provencheret al. (2008) found that weighing people–a heavy-handed way to makepeople aware of the consequences of their diet–did not reduce the healthhalo effect.

Another approach, known as counterfactual thinking, has shown prom-ising results. The basic idea is that since health halos are caused by theselective activation of claim-consistent information, consumers should beencouraged to question the validity of the health claims to begin with. Forexample, Chandon and Wansink (2007a) asked people to “consider theopposite” and to find arguments against the claim that a sandwich from afictitious “healthy” fast-food chain (“Good Karma Healthy Foods”) wasalso healthy. Prompting people to question the validity of health claimseliminated halo-based biases when estimating the calories of the sand-wich, and led them to select more reasonable side dishes. A related idea isto shift people’s attention away from “qualitative” health-based

2The 29 nutrition claims authorized in the European Union are: low energy, energy-reduced, energy-free, low fat, fat-free, low saturated fat, saturated fat-free, low sugars, sugars-free, with no addedsugars, low sodium/salt, very low sodium/salt, sodium-free or salt-free, source of fibre, high fibre,source of protein, high protein, source of [name of vitamin/s] and/or [name of mineral/s], high [nameof vitamin/s] and/or [name of mineral/s], contains [name of the nutrient or other substance], increased[name of the nutrient], reduced [name of the nutrient], light/lite, naturally/natural, source of omega-3fatty acids, high omega-3 fatty acids, high monounsaturated fat, high polyunsaturated fat, and highunsaturated fat.


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categorization and encourage them to consider the “quantitative” size ofthe meal. Chernev and Gal (2010) showed that the “negative calorie illu-sion” disappeared when people were first asked to think about the size(as opposed to the healthiness) of various meals.

Reducing biases in serving size perception is generally more difficultthan reducing biases created by health halos. This is becausepsychophysical-based errors are more automatic and less likely thanassociation-based errors to be corrected by incentives (Arkes 1991). Forexample, we (Chandon and Wansink 2007b) found that educating peopleabout their diminishing sensitivity to increasing meal sizes led to ageneral increase in calorie estimates but did not improve people’s sensitiv-ity to changes in quantity (see figure 4). Rather than trying to “debias”perceptions of magnitude, a more effective approach consists of using theproperties of the psychophysical curve to help people spontaneouslyobtain a more accurate estimate. For example, we (Chandon and Wansink2007b) exploited the fact that quantity perceptions are highly sensitive tosmall meals. In a piecemeal estimation condition we asked people toprovide separate estimates for the number of calories of the chicken, friesand soda in their meal (three estimates of small quantities) instead ofasking them to estimate the number of calories of the entire meal (a largequantity, likely to be underestimated). We found that piecemeal estimationeffectively removed quantity biases and enabled people to accurately per-ceive increases in meal sizes.

Mindless Healthy Eating Nudges

We cannot expect that most people will adopt cognitively-costlymindful eating for the dozens of automatic food decisions that they makeevery day. Even if smart mindful consumption strategies are learned, andpeople do question health claims or think about food quantity and notjust its nutritional quality, it is not clear that they will be willing to sustainthis over the three years that are usually necessary to lose weight andreach a new equilibrium (Hall et al. 2011).

Evidence of the unobtrusive effects of environmental factors suggestsanother complementary approach, focusing on changing the choice envi-ronment at both the time of purchase and the time of consumption(Thaler and Sunstein 2003). This is consistent with the current “smallsteps” approach to obesity prevention, which recognizes that obesity isnot a moral weakness but a normal response to the changing environment(Hill 2009; Swinburn et al. 2011). This stands in contrast with traditionalpublic education efforts that exhort people through didactic and some-times moralizing appeals to change their dietary habits.

The small-steps approach focuses on adopting smaller, more sustainablegoals; it recognizes that self-control is a limited, often absent resource andfocuses less on persuasion and more on environmental interventions that“nudge” consumers into making slightly better but repeated food choiceswithout thinking. This is done mostly by altering the eating environment,for example by substituting calorie-dense drinks like soft drinks withcalorie-light drinks like water or diet soft drink in cafeterias, surrepti-tiously improving food composition, encouraging people to prefer smallerpackage sizes by promoting them on menus (or by eliminating quantitydiscounts and adding an extra-small size to the range), storing tempting


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food out of reach and healthier alternatives within reach, using smallercups and bowls, and pre-plating food instead of using family-styleservice. The small-steps approach is not designed to achieve major weightloss among the obese, but rather to prevent obesity among the 90% of thepopulation that is gradually becoming fat by consuming an excess of lessthan 100 calories per day (Hill et al. 2003).

Conclusion

Packaging has become an important way for food manufacturers tomarket their products and influence food choices. In this paper we haveillustrated the many ways that packaged-based marketing claims createhealth halos, which influence people’s taste and healthiness expectations,their sensory experience, and their consumption. We have also shown thatthe size and shape of packages, servings and containers influence con-sumption volume by changing people’s perception of how much food isserved, and of how much they have eaten. In both cases, we find that theeffects on short-term consumption are meaningful, with many instances ofup to 30% changes in consumption. Remarkably, people do not believethat packaging influences how much they eat and are largely unawarewhen it does. For example, we found that people believed that a combina-tion of three “healthy” foods had 28% fewer calories than three “unheal-thy” meals; although in reality the combination of healthy foodscontained 34% more calories (see figure 1). Labeling chocolate candies as“low-fat” increased actual calorie intake by 46% among overweightpeople, but increased their perceived calorie intake by only 8% (seefigure 2). Finally, people overlooked up to 50% of the quantity increase inlarge meals and packages despite their best efforts (see figures 3 and 4).These effects stand in contrast to other marketing actions like price change(which influence consumers through conscious decisions) or advertising(which consumers know attempt to persuade them) – both of which arepersuasive attempts familiar to adult consumers.

Policy intervention designed to regulate the effects of packaged-basedmarketing can be justified on the grounds that such marketing creates mis-perceptions instead of just changing preferences. Encouraging consumers tothink about food quantity (not just quality), and prompting them to questionthe validity of health claims works better than simply informing them abouthealth halos. Unfortunately, most consumers are unlikely to engage in suchhigh-involvement reasoning on a habitual basis. In this context, it makessense to generalize size, calorie, and nutritional labeling to away-from-homeconsumption and to impose restrictions on health and nutrition claimssimilar to those adopted by the EC. However, this information is only likelyto influence the behavior of the subset of consumers who are willing to payattention and who are actually interested in healthier eating. Moreover, regu-lations may encourage some food marketers to compete on taste rather thanon health, which would negate most of the consumer-based benefits ofbetter information. In light of these limitations, a promising approach maybe to change the choice context at the points of purchase and consumptionso that the healthy choice becomes the easy choice. Obviously, a combina-tion of smart regulation, promotion of mindful eating, and mindless nudgesis more likely to work than any of them in isolation.


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Among the many unresolved questions, future research should jointlystudy the behavior of marketers and consumers and explicitly account forheterogeneity in beliefs and goals. The same change (e.g. reduced fat,sugar, and salt) can be seen positively by those who worry about theirweight and health and negatively by those who focus on taste. On thesupply side, some companies may choose to focus on improving the nutri-tional quality of their foods, whereas others would focus on taste, price orconvenience. In addition, there is clearly a need to examine whether thefindings reviewed here, which were often conducted among young, edu-cated North American consumers, apply to different cultures.

One of the most important areas for future research would be toexamine how the short-term effects reviewed here hold across time.Longer time horizons are particularly important because habituation andcompensation can offset short-term effects. Ideally, these new studieswould combine the best characteristics of consumer research (includingrich psychological insights and multi-method testing), nutrition (includinglongitudinal designs, representative participants, biomarkers of calorieintake and expenditures), and economics (including population-levelinterventions and analyses, and policy implications).

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